Class 'BX^ 2 2.iT 
Book X^4."TS 

1 r 

PRESENTED BY 



CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 



Delivered Before the Synod of South Carolina 
in the First Presbyterian Church, Columbia 
October 23, 24, 1912 



COMMEMORATING THE BIRTH 

OF THE 

REVEREND JAMES HENLEY THORNWELL, D. D., LL.D 



PUBLISHED BY ORDER OF THE SYNOD 



SPARTANBURG. S. C. 
BAND & WHITE. PRINTERS 
1913 



PREFACE 



The Reverend James Henley Thornwell, D. D., LL. D., was 
born near Cheraw, S. C, December 9, 1812, and was reared in 
the same section of this State. Left in poverty and obscurity by 
the death of his father while yet a child, he was taken up in early 
life and educated by General James Gillespie and Mr. William 
H. Robbins; and at their expense, together with that of General 
Samuel W. Gillespie, he was sent through South Carolina College, 
where he was graduated in 1831, with the first honors of his class. 

While teaching in Sumterville in 1832 he made profession of 
faith in Christ, uniting with Concord Church, and immediately 
began to prepare for the ministry, to which he was ordained by 
Bethel Presbytery in 1834. His subsequent life, extending to 
August 1, 1862, was spent entirely in connection with the Synod 
of South Carolina, in which he rendered most valuable and 
distinguished service to the Church and the State. 

It therefore seemed meet to the Synod to make appropriate 
celebration of his illustrious career and eminent services near 
the Centennial of his birth, and accordingly at its sessions in 
Newberry, October, 1910, it adopted the following resolution: 

The 9th of December, 1912, will be the centennial of the birth 
of the Rev. James H. Thornwell, D. D., LL. D., a son of this 
Synod, who spent his whole ministerial life in our bounds, and 
who rendered most eminent service to our Church in defining her 
theological views, and in expounding, organizing, and applying 
her ecclesiastical polity. Therefore, 

Resolved b That the Synod during its sessions in 1912 make ap- 
propriate celebration of this noteworthy centennial ; and that a 
committee of three be now appointed by the Moderator to make 
the necessary arrangements for this celebration, and report to 
the next meeting of Synod. 

The Moderator appointed the following as the committee, Rev. 
Drs. T. H. Law, and E. P. Davis, and Elder H. E. Ravenel, 
who reported to the next Synod, recommending that the meeting 
for 1912 be held in the First Church, Columbia, which Dr. 
Thornwell had twice served as pastor, and in the city where 
nearly all his eminent services to the Church had been rendered ; 
and that three set addresses be delivered during this meeting, on 



4 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



several specified phases of Dr. Thornwell's life and work, by 
speakers named. This report was adopted; and during the ses- 
sions of the Synod in the First Church, Columbia, October 23d 
and 24th, 19 1 2, the addresses were delivered as appointed, in the 
presence of large congregations assembled with the Synod to 
hear them. And with reference to them, the Synod adopted the 
following : 

Resolved, That we have heard with genuine profit and pleas- 
ure the eloquent and learned address delivered by Rev. Thornton 
Whaling, D. D., on "Dr. Thornwell as a Theologian ;" by Rev. 
A. M. Fraser, D. D., on "Dr. Thornwell as an Ecclesiologist ;" 
and by Rev. Thomas H. Law, D. D., on "Dr. Thornwell as a 
Preacher and a Teacher," all of which addresses were delivered 
as part of the celebration of the Centennial of the birth of the 
Rev. James H. Thornwell, D. D., LL. D. ; and the Synod now 
desires to put on record its appreciation of these valuable contri- 
butions to the life and memory of our distinguished divine. 

Resolved, further, That the Stated Clerk of Synod, with W. A. 
Clark, of Columbia, and John McSween, of Timmonsville, be ap- 
pointed a committee and authorized to procure from the speak- 
ers copies of these addresses, and, with the consent of the speak- 
ers, have the same printed for distribution among the members of 
Synod; and be authorized to meet the expenses thereof out of 
any funds in the hands of the Treasurer not otherwise appro- 
priated. 

In compliance with these resolutions, this little volume is now 
sent forth. 
Spartanburg, S. C, December 31, 1912. 



r 



CENTENNIAL ADDRESSES 



Dr. Thornwell As a Preacher and a Teacher 

REV. THOMAS. H. LAW, D. D v SPARTANBURG, S. C. 

I confess to sincere hesitancy and genuine misgiving in allow- 
ing myself, by the action of the other members of the committee 
appointed to arrange for this centennial, to be put upon its pro- 
gram. In my own opinion, others could have done the service 
better. But to discourse upon Dr. Thornwell as a 
Preacher and a Teacher, it seemed important to have one who 
knew him as such by personal experience. And so great have 
been the ravages of death during the fifty years since his depar- 
ture, that very few now remain of the many who sat under his 
ministry as a Preacher, and at his feet as a Teacher. But, 
having enjoyed this rare privilege during my whole Seminary 
course, circumstances appeared to make it proper that I should 
undertake the task assigned. 

And so, what I shall say on this occasion will be largely remi- 
niscent. Although a half -century, full of exciting events in our 
history and of absorbing work on my own part, has elapsed since 
my illustrious friend and preceptor was called from distin- 
guished and most useful service on earth to the higher and more 
blessed service of Heaven, I still retain a very distinct impres- 
sion and vivid recollection of him, both in the pulpit and in the 
professor's chair. And I have refreshed my memory in this 
respect and gathered further authentic information, by re-read- 
ing — and I must say, with the most intense pleasure and 
profit — "Thornwell's Life and Letters," by his friend and co- 
laborer, Dr. B. M. Palmer, who, I am told, regarded this book 
as his best contribution to the press. 

Dr. Thornweirs public service to the Church and his genera- 
tion alternated between that of preaching and teaching, and for 
the most part combined the two functions. It seems appro- 
priate, therefore, that he should be considered in these two 
kindred aspects of his life and service together. But, to treat 
the subject more clearly, let us distinguish, and consider first 



6 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



DR. THORNWELL AS A PREACHER. 

In a very remarkable way the Lord indicated His predestina- 
tion of young Thornwell to the gospel ministry. So far as we 
have any record, he was not born and reared in circumstances 
which pointed in this direction. His father, whose occupation 
was that of an overseer of slaves on the plantation of another, 
died when James was nine years of age, and left his widowed 
mother with several small children to care for and rear, in a 
condition of poverty arid straitness which afforded her little op- 
portunity to provide for their due education and training. That 
she was a woman of positive religous character, who impressed 
upon her son's youthful mind the truths of Christianity, he 
himself gratefully testifies. But, on account of his aptness to 
learn and his manifest brilliancy of intellect, at an early age 
he was taken from his home to be educated through the gen- 
erosity of kind and noble gentlemen. And, as far as we can 
gather, neither of these in any way sought to direct his attention 
to the ministry. Mr. W. H. Robbins, who had taken the bright lad 
to his own home in Cheraw to educate him, was not at that time 
a professing Christian; and both he and Gen. James Gillespie, 
the other patron, had thought and spoken of the profession of 
the law, which Mr. Robbins himself followed, as affording the pro- 
per sphere for the development and exercise of the talents of their 
little, pale-faced protege. But when young Thornwell, dwelling 
in the home of his bachelor patron and enjoying the advantages 
of his society and his library, as well as of the village school, 
was yet a youth of sixteen, he heard incidentally from his patrons 
their idea that he should become a lawyer. And so overwhelming 
was his conviction at that time, though not then himself a pro- 
fessing Christian, that he must prepare for the gospel ministry, 
even though it involved, as he apprehended, the sundering of 
the affectionate and delightful relations with his noble patrons 
and his loss of their needed help in his education, he felt con- 
strained to inform Mr. Robbins; and, unable to talk to him face 
to face about the matter, he wrote a manly, courageous letter, 
unfolding his views and convictions ; and, putting it under Mr. 
Robbins' plate at the supper table, hid himself until the dreaded 
revelation should occur. Mr. Robbins read it, and hunting his 
missing protege, found him hiding on the piazza and weeping 
as if his heart would break. But, noble and wise man that he 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



7 



was, he took James by the hand, led him back to his accus- 
tomed place, and comforted his anxious heart with the assur- 
ance that no 'obstacle would be put in the way of his complying 
with his convictions of duty, and that the kindly relations be- 
tween him and his patrons should not be disturbed on that 
account. 

We hear no more of this matter until young Thornwell had 
been graduated at South Carolina College, with the first honors 
of his class, at the age of nineteen, and was engaged in teaching 
at Sumterville, S. C, where he made profession of faith and 
united with old Concord Church. And now firmly decided to 
preach the gospel, he declared at once that purpose and began 
to direct his further studies to that end. 

Just here it is proper to explain how young Thornwell be- 
came a Presbyterian and turned to the ministry of our Church. 
He was not born and bred in that faith. His mother was a 
member of the Baptist Church, and so lived and died. None of 
his generous patrons who educated him were Presbyterians. 
The family of Mr. Pegues, to which he was first taken, was of 
the Methodist persuasion. Mr. Robbins, with whom he resided 
afterwards, though reared a Congregationalist, was not, as 
already said, at that time a member of the church, but later 
in life united with the Episcopal Church. While at college in 
this city, Thornwell rarely — it is said only once — attended the 
Presbyterian Church. But it is related that in one of his after- 
noon strolls in Columbia he dropped into a book store; and, 
ever eager after books, he noticed one lying on the counter bear- 
ing the name "Confession of Faith." (Westminster, of course.) 
Struck with its contents, he bought it and took it to his room 
in the college. And beginning to read it, he was so fascinated 
with its logical unfolding of Scripture truth that he read it 
through that night before he lay down to sleep; and he was 
so thoroughly convinced by the truth it set forth, that he ac- 
cepted its system of doctrine at once. Hence, when a year or 
two later he was converted, he naturally sought membership in 
the Presbyterian Church. And, in passing, let me add that in 
after life there never was a more sincere and ardent adherent, 
and an abler, nobler champion of our standards than he. 

Although directing his studies in preparation for the min- 
istry, young Thornwell continued to teach in Sumterville, and 



8 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



subsequently in Cheraw, for a year or two more. Why did he 
not, as usual in this day, repair to the theological seminary? 
Our cherished institution in Columbia, although his eyes were 
turned to it, was then in its infancy — planted there in 1831, the 
year of his graduation — and with very inadequate and unattrac- 
tive equipment. He was induced to go to Andover Seminary, 
but was not at all pleased with the conditions there; and soon 
went to Harvard University, where he pursued special studies 
for a few months. 

In 1833 he was taken under care of Harmony Presbytery as 
a candidate for the ministry, and in 1834, when twenty-two 
years of age, was licensed by the same presbytery as a proba- 
tioner for this office. Shortly afterwards he began the regular 
work of the ministry at Lancasterville, in this state, where a 
new church was organized, and he served his first pastorate in 
that and the country churches of Waxhaw and Six-Mile Creek. 

At this point in my discourse it may be well to set forth Dr. 
Thornwell's conception of a call to the ministry and some of his 
early experiences in connection with this office and work. He was 
always a man of very clear views and very positive convictions 
of the truth. Though recorded later in life, I quote from his 
own pen his idea of a call to preach the gospel. (Collected Writ- 
ings, Vol. IV., pp. 32, 33) : "That a supernatural conviction of 
duty, wrought by the immediate agency of the Holy Ghost, is 
an essential element in the evidence of a true vocation to the 
ministry, seems to me to be the clear and authoritative doctrine 
of the Scriptures. Men are not led to the pastoral office as 
they are induced to select other professions in life; they are 
drawn, as a sinner is drawn to Christ, by a mighty, invincible 
work of the Spirit. The call of God never fails to be con- 
vincing. Men are made to feel that a woe is upon them if they 
preach not the Gospel. It is not that they love the work, for 
often, like Moses, they are reluctant to engage in it, and love 
at best can only render its duties pleasant; it is not that they 
desire the office, though in indulging this desire they seek a 
good thing; it is not that they are zealous for the glory of 
God and burn for the salvation of souls, for this is characteris- 
tic of every true believer; nor is it upon a due estimate of their 
talents and acquirements they promise themselves more extended 
usefulness in this department of labor than in any other, for 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



9 



no man is anything in the kingdom of heaven except as God 
makes him so; but it is that the Word of the Lord is like fire 
in the bones; they must preach it or die; they cannot escape 
from the awful impression, which haunts them night and day 
and banishes all peace from the soul until the will is bowed, 
that God has laid this work upon them at the hazard of their 
lives." 

And a striking incident connected with his entrance upon this 
high and holy calling is recorded. Like every other young can- 
didate, he had his doubts and misgivings as to his call, though 
impelled by a conviction of duty to seek the office. He was 
on his way to his first, or an early, appointment in the new 
field to which he had been invited. And, like the struggle which 
involved the soul of Jesus in His temptation in the wilderness, 
the powers of darkness overwhelmed him, and the artful adver- 
sary plied him with the most serious misgivings. With a high- 
strung, sensitive nature like his, and the world appealing most 
powerfully to his natural ambition, it was a fearful struggle, a 
real Gethsemane in his experience. But the crisis came as he 
entered the pulpit and began the service. Light from above 
then beamed in upon him, peace and joy filled his soul, and the 
Spirit of God unloosed his fettered lips. The question was set- 
tled, the victory was won, the divine anointing was bestowed; 
and the charmed hearers bore testimony to his power. And 
from that momentous hour he was a minister called and owned 
of the Lord. 

But though favored and encouraged in his ministry, enjoying 
constant evidences of the divine blessing upon his work, the 
young pastor did not remain long at Lancasterville. After two 
years in this field, Dr. Thornwell, then twenty-five years of age, 
was elected professor of Logic and Belles Lettres in South Caro- 
lina College and called back to this high service in his Alma 
Mater. How, with his exalted views of his sacred calling, he 
could have accepted this position which did not offer the op- 
portunity of regularly preaching the Gospel, we are not advised. 
But doubtless, there were reasons unrecorded which made him 
recognize this to be the call of God. 

However, his insatiable desire to preach the Word and his deep 
sense of obligation to fulfill his ministerial calling made him 
restive and prevented his remaining long in this otherwise con- 



10 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



genial and honorable position. Before two years had elapsed, 
he joyfully accepted a call to the pastorate of this (Columbia) 
church and came back to the pulpit — which he filled with great 
zeal, ability and satisfaction to his flock. 

But only one year passed before he was again called back to 
the college, this time to be its chaplain, as well as professor of 
Sacred Literature and Evidences of Christianity. 

This position Dr. Thornwell filled with signal ability and suc- 
cess for ten years. While he taught Christianity from his chair 
with ardor and force, he served also as the duly appointed 
pastor of the college community, conducted the daily prayers, and 
preached the Gospel with burning zeal every Sabbath in the 
chapel. But his passion for the full and undivided work of the 
ministry kept him restless and dissatisfied, even with these great 
opportunities of usefulness to the young men of his native State 
and to others who shared his ministry in this prominent seat of 
learning. And so, when a call came to him to the pastorate of 
the Second Church of Baltimore, recently vacated by the dis- 
tinguished Dr. Robert J. Breckinridge, he gladly consented to 
accept it; and Charleston Presbytery, though most reluctant to 
have him leave, put the call into his hands. But the College 
trustees, supported strongly by the faculty, availed them- 
selves of a rule not hitherto enforced, and put a veto upon his 
going by refusing to release him without a year's notice in ad- 
vance. However, in 1851, when another call came to him from 
Glebe Street Church, Charleston, he did accept it and entered 
once more upon coveted pastoral work. 

As I now see it, it seems strange that a minister whose fame 
had already spread abroad throughout the land and stood in the 
very front rank of our preachers, should have considered a 
call from what was then little more than a missionary enterprise 
of the Second Church of Charleston, and used a small, unat- 
tractive building located on a narrow side street in an obscure 
situation, which in later years was abandoned for these reasons. 
(As a lad of twelve years, I happened to be on a visit to Charles- 
ton in March, 1851, and heard Dr. Thornwell's sermon on a 
trial visit to this church, the first sermon I ever heard him 
preach.) But, strange as it may appear that he should have ac- 
cepted this call, such was his zeal to preach the Gospel that he 
went, entered with fervor upon the pastoral work, attracted 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



ii 



audiences that made the little building overflow and require en- 
largement of its accommodations, and greatly delighted his 
flock. 

But scarcely eight months had passed before South Carolina 
College once more laid its hands upon its now distinguished 
alumnus and professor, and called him back to its service, this 
time as president as well as chaplain and professor in his former 
chair. Seriously hesitating and most reluctant to surrender his 
delightful and promising pastorate, Providence, as he felt, led 
him back to the college. And four years more of splendid ser- 
vice were given to that institution, where his administration as 
president was most successful at a time when it was greatly 
needed. But the time had now come when his Church realized 
that she should have his services in another sphere. Accordingly, 
in 1856, he was transferred to the Theological Seminary in Co- 
lumbia, as professor of Didactic and Polemic Theology, and filled 
in connection therewith once more the pulpit of this church — for 
a while as stated supply, and then as installed pastor. This 
latter relation, however, was of short duration, on account of 
his final failure of health, followed August i, 1862, by his un- 
timely decease. It was while he served this church in 1859 that 
I, as a student of the Seminary, came under his ministry and 
heard him preach, more or less constantly, until my graduation 
in 1862. 

Before passing from this brief outline of Dr. Thornwell' s 
work as a preacher, it may be well to consider for a moment 
that apparently strange fact that, though so eminent as a preacher 
of eloquence, ability and popularity, and so renowned and valued 
throughout the Church, he should have spent so large a portion 
of his ministry in the State institution — where all the time he 
felt painfully caged and cribbed in the exercise of his ministry, 
restricted to very small and doubtless unappreciative audiences, 
and the burden of teaching was constantly repressing his ener- 
gies and exhausting his strength. In looking back at the Provi- 
dence which so ordered his lot, the explanation is probably to 
be found in this fact: At the time when young Thornwell 
entered South Carolina College its president was Dr. Thomas 
Cooper, a man captivating in many respects, but a blatant in- 
fidel, who was using his high office to poison the minds of the 
choicest young men of the State attending upon its chief institu- 



12 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



tion of learning, and in disseminating infidel influences from 
which our people did not recover for a generation or more. But Dr. 
Thornwell seems to have been the man whom God raised up, 
qualified and sent to this very fountain of baleful influence to 
correct and purify it, and redeem the State from its pernicious 
power. While yet himself but a youthful student in the Col- 
lege, although an ardent admirer of Dr. Cooper personally, he 
soon discovered and began to combat and tear to pieces the 
flimsy infidel system of his instructor. And, as he developed 
more and more, he appeared to be the very man capable of de- 
stroying this evil, to which the eyes of the public had become 
opened, and of saving the rising generation of our cultured 
young men from the ruin which threatened them. To do, and to 
complete, this great and important work, the Lord appears 
to have held him in the College, and to have sent him back again 
and again, until the time had come for him to enter upon and 
fulfill his noblest and best work in connection with the School 
of the Prophets in this city. 

And now, having given this hurried sketch of Dr. Thornwell's 
ministry, let us next consider what were his characteristics as a 
Preacher. 

His bodily presence was not imposing. He was small of 
stature, spare of build, with diminutive limbs — his weight be- 
ing hardly over 100 pounds. His shoulders were a little stooped 
and his chest flat and somewhat sunken. His hair was jet 
black and worn longer than usual in this day ; and he always, as I 
knew him, wore side whiskers. His dress was somewhat peculiar : 
always black, and his everyday attire was generally a swallow-tail 
coat, high-heel boots and beaver hat. His voice, though rather 
coarse for one of his size, was not high-keyed or very strong. His 
manner in the pulpit appeared at first a little awkward, marked by 
a nodding of the head as he emphasized in reading and beginning 
to speak; but all this passed off as he warmed up to his sub- 
ject. His action was. not specially graceful, his gestures being 
somewhat angular, and the lifting of both hands — the right 
holding a large white handkerchief — was very common. But 
all this was unnoticed as he proceeded with his discourse. His 
tone in the pulpit was always solemn, and grave, and earnest. 
He might practise pleasantry in the class room, or on the floor 
of the Church courts, but never in the pulpit, where he seemed 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



13 



to realize fully that he stood as an ambassador of Christ to 
dying men. The profoundest reverence, earnestness and zeal 
pervaded his pulpit utterances. And withal there was about him 
an inexplicable something which impressed and captivated his 
hearers ; as one of my classmates expresses it, describing his 
own experience as he heard Dr. Thornwell for the first time: 
"A mysterious power — not universally bestowed: an attribute of 
greatness : a soul power that seems almost to disregard physi- 
cal conditions and material instrumentalities. I think I should 
have had a spiritual uplift if I had gone home without hearing 
the great preacher say a word. It would have been a word- 
less sermon of great power and lasting enrichment." 

His language was rather that of the schools than of the 
masses. He says himself that he was at first sadly deficient in 
the use of words; and for this reason committed to memory in 
early life much of the Scriptures, Milton and Shakespeare, in 
order that he might acquire the English tongue. And he had 
studied philosophy so constantly and enthusiastically that he 
naturally acquired the habit of thinking and speaking in terms 
adapted to this science. So his language was not popular. I 
have heard him try to preach to children; but very soon his 
tongue would slip off into phraseology which they could not un- 
derstand. I have heard him preach to negroes, but uncon- 
sciously he dressed his thoughts in words above their compre- 
hension. And in late years I have heard some say that they 
could not read his writings with pleasure because his style was 
not what they could readily understand. But for my own part, 
having become accustomed to it, his style is to me the most at- 
tractive of any author whose writings I consult. It is wonder- 
fully clear and thoroughly accurate — always using the very 
best English word to express the thought. And Dr. Thornwell 
had so thoroughly studied the Bible and incorporated its 
truths and language into the very fibre of his thoughts, 
that his sermons and other religious writings are steeped with 
Scripture ideas and phraseology — his profoundest concep- 
tions of truth and his grandest arguments in its exposition and 
vindication finding expression in the very words of inspiration. 
This adds the highest charm to his style. 

Some say, too, that he lacked imagination in his preachings. But, 
while it is true that he did not freely indulge this faculty and 



14 Thornwell Centennial Addresses 

gave flights to his imaginative and descriptive powers, as some 
others whom I have known, his manner of sermonizing being 
rather that of close reasoning and impetuous argument, I did 
not observe any lack in this respect when I sat under his minis- 
try; nor do I perceive it now when I read his sermons, which 
appear to me to abound in appropriate figures and the choicest 
rhetoric. 

Some again have entertained the idea that Dr. Thornwell was 
cold and intellectual in his preaching. There never was a 
greater mistake. While his sermons were indeed intellectual, in 
that they were profound, logical and distinctly argumentative, 
they were most thoroughly Scriptural and spiritual. He heart- 
ily accepted the Bible as the infallible and all-sufficient Word of 
God, which alone he was commissioned to preach. And I never 
sat under any preacher who more faithfully expounded Scrip- 
ture. And as he had himself drunk deeply of the fountains of 
grace in his profound studies and in the frequent and severe 
discipline to which Providence subjected him, he poured forth 
in his discourses the most spiritual views and applications of Di- 
vine truth. 

Another characteristic of Dr. Thornwell's "preaching was — 
what Dr. James W. Alexander notes in his "Thoughts on 
Preaching" — that he often used great themes on which he pre- 
pared great sermons. As evidence of this, look at the few ser- 
mons which have been preserved and are published in his "Col- 
lected Writings." Many of these great sermons on great themes 
were his baccalaureate sermons while chaplain of South Car- 
olina College, preached specially to the graduating classes of 
that institution. One of these, a commencement sermon, I have 
lately re-read, in order specially to judge of his style and his 
method of preaching. It is that on "The Necessity of the Atone- 
ment," delivered to the graduating class of South Carolina Col- 
lege in 1844. It is in itself a masterly treatise on theology, 
covering all the essentials of the Christian scheme, and setting 
forth the whole plan of redemption in its clearest and most 
Scriptural view. As I thus read it over thoughtfully and care- 
fully, I was not surprised at what occurred in my personal ex- 
perience many years ago. While I was laboring as evangelist of 
Charleston Presbytery in 1867-9 an ^ was intimately associated 
with the ministers of Charleston, I remember that one day Dr. Gir- 



Thomwell Centennial Addresses 



15 



ardeau remarked to me : "Dr. Thornwell's sermon on 'The Neces- 
sity of the Atonement' has done more in shaping my theology 
than anything that ever came into my hands." (Of course, he 
had no reference to the Bible.) And not long afterwards I was 
talking with the Rev. Christopher P. Gadsden, a prominent 
and most evangelical Episcopal minister of that city — rector of 
St. Luke's Church — and he made identically the same remark. 
Later I learned that Mr. Gadsden was a member of that gradu- 
ating class to which the sermon was preached, of 1844, and was 
chairman of the committee which requested and secured its 
publication. 

And this brings me to the consideration of the effects of Dr. 
Thornwell's preaching. None who knew him would question 
his matchless ability, his profound learning, his fervid elo- 
quence, and his spiritual unction. But what were the practical, 
spiritual effects of his great preaching? That he was a Revi- 
valist, whose ministry was distinguished by gathering souls into 
the kingdom — as was Dr. Daniel Baker, of that day, and Dr. 
R. A. Torrey, of the present time — none would say. He seems 
not to have directed his efforts especially upon this line. But, 
as to the real, permanent effects of his ministry in upholding 
the truth, in vindicating the Word of God, in relieving doubts, 
in comforting the sorrowing, and in edifying the saints, there 
is abundant testimony. Everywhere that God called him to 
preach, the common people heard him gladly and flocked to 
attend upon his ministrations. It is related that in his earliest 
ministry in Lancaster County the country people heard him 
with rapt attention and delight, and sometimes were so 
charmed and impressed under his preaching that unconsciously 
they gathered about the pulpit as they eagerly listened to his 
powerful preaching. The late Dr. A. A. Morse, of our Synod, 
once told me that while he was a student of South Carolina 
College, James H. Carlisle, the eminent saint and distinguished 
educator of my own city, who lately passed away, entered the 
college. His father, a local Methodist preacher, had had se- 
rious misgivings about sending his son there to sit under the 
Calvanistic preaching of Chaplain Thornwell. (We Methodists 
and Presbyterians of this day understand each other better.) 
But Sabbath after Sabbath, upon returning from the chapel 
services, young Carlisle would stop at Morse's room to talk over 



1 6 Thomwell Centennial Addresses 

the sermon, and freely declared that he had never heard the 
Scriptures so delightfully and profitably expounded before. He, 
too, was of the class and committee that claimed the sermon on 
"The Necessity of the Atonement." 

Only the other day a brother was telling me that Dr. Brackett, 
my gifted classmate, who was not given to emotional excite- 
ment, had told him how, while we were students together in 
the Seminary, he had wept under Dr. Thornwell's preaching as 
he unfolded and pressed the claims of foreign missions from 
the pulpit. When he was pastor of Glebe Street Church, 
Charleston, I have been told, that one evening he preached a 
sermon on the Judgment; and, without any appeals to the im- 
agination or pathetic picturing of the terrors attending that great 
event, but in the earnest, powerful opening up of the awful 
truth, the whole congregation appeared terror-stricken and un- 
consciously seized the backs of the pews, as when Jonathan 
Edwards preached his memorable sermon on "Sinners in the 
Hands of an Angry God." One young man, who in later years 
became an associate of mine, was present on this occasion, and 
said he never was so frightened in all his life. 

At the General Assembly in Indianapolis, in 1859, it is related 
that Dr. Thornwell preached a sermon from the text, "Simon, 
son of Jonas; lovest thou Me?" which melted the whole audi- 
ence to tears. 

These are a few instances of the immediate effect of his 
preaching, which might be multiplied. And, if I may bear my 
own personal testimony, although I had enjoyed the ministra- 
tions of fine preachers before I came to the Seminary, I never 
sat under the preaching of any minister who so impressed, in- 
structed, and edified me as did Dr. Thornwell. And so from 
my own experience, I am prepared to endorse most heartily this 
glowing portrayal of his preaching as given by Dr. Palmer : 

"The feature most remarkable in this prince of pulpit orators 
was the rare union of vigorous logic with strong emotion. He 
reasoned always, but never coldly. He did not present truth in 
what Bacon calls 'the dry light of the understanding'; clear, in- 
deed, but without the heat which warms and fructifies. Dr. 
Thornwell wove his argument in fire. His mind warmed with 
the friction of his own thoughts, and glowed with the rapidity 
of his own motion ; and the speaker was borne along in what 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



17 



seemed to others a chariot of flame. One must have listened to 
him to form an adequate conception of what we mean. Filled 
with the sublimity of his theme, and feeling in the depths of his 
soul its transcendent importance, he could not preach the Gospel 
of the grace of God with the coldness of a philosopher. As the 
flood of his discourse set in, one could perceive the ground- 
swell from beneath, the heaving tide of passionate emotion 
which rolled it on. Kindling with a secret inspiration, his man- 
ner lost its slight constraint; all angularity of gesture and awk- 
wardness of posture suddenly disappeared; the spasmodic shak- 
ing of the head entirely ceased ; his slender form dilated ; his 
deep grey eye lost its drooping expression; the soul came and 
looked forth, lighting it up with a strange brilliancy ; his frail 
body rocked and trembled as under a divine afflatus, as though 
the impatient spirit would rend its tabernacle and fly forth to 
God and heaven upon the wings of his impassioned words ; until 
his fiery eloquence, rising with the greatness of his concep- 
tions, burst upon the hearers in some grand climax, overwhelm- 
ing in its majesty and resistless in its effect. * * * * 

"This generation will never look upon his like again ; a single 
century cannot afford to produce his equal. It may listen to 
much lucid exposition, much close and powerful reasoning, 
much tender and earnest appeal, much beautiful and varied 
imagery; but never from the lips of one man can it be stirred 
by vigor of argument fused by a seraphic glow and pouring 
itself forth in strains which linger in the memory like the chant 
of angels." 

And now, turning our attention for a little while to 

DR. THORNWELL AS A TEACHER 

I have already sketched incidentally the history of his work as 
such. But let me recapitulate. Shortly after his graduation at 
South Carolina College, he began teaching a private school in 
Sumterville. The next year found him principal of the Cheraw 
Academy, where he taught one or two sessions more. At the 
age of twenty-five he was professor of Logic and Belles Lettres 
in his Alma Mater. Returning to the same institution from a year's 
pastorate of this church, he filled the chair of Sacred Liter- 
ature and Evidences of Christianity, along with the chaplaincy. 
A few years later, after eight months' pastorate in Charleston, 



1 8 Thornwell Centennial Addresses 

he returned once more to the College, which he served as pres- 
ident, chaplain and professor in the same chair. And, finally, 
he was transferred to the chair of Theology in the Columbia 
Seminary, where he served seven years, to the end of his short 
life. So that, while he usually served in the dual capacity of 
Preacher and Teacher, for the greater part of the thirty years 
allowed him for the service of the Church he was engaged in 
teaching. 

And what shall I say of him in this capacity? My own de- 
liberate opinion is that as such Dr. Thornwell stood in a class 
by himself. I thought I had had excellent teachers before I 
came to the Seminary ; we had other able and successful instruct- 
ors there; but, in my judgment, none was to be mentioned in 
the same category with Dr. Thornwell. All in all, he completely 
towered above any other I have known as a teacher. My 
own opinion in this respect is fully sustained by the judgment 
of others who sat with me in the Seminary, and whose im- 
pressions I have secured. And Dr. Palmer, than whom none 
knew him more thoroughly and was more capable of forming a 
correct opinion — through association with him as fellow-professor 
in the Seminary, and close and intimate fellowship with him 
for twenty years in this city — expresses his judgment in even 
stronger terms. 

But what were Dr. Thornwell's characteristics as a Teacher? 

First, a genuine enthusiasm in the subject which he taught. 
No matter what it was — whether the ancient languages, belles 
lettres, philosophy, sacred literature or theology — he could not 
teach it in a cold, formal or superficial way. Such was the 
keenness of his intellect, the ardor of his temperament, and the 
innate passion of his soul for the truth, that he was impelled 
to investigate thoroughly every subject for himself and to in- 
corporate into his own nature the knowledge acquired. Hence, 
he ever brought into the professor's chair a zeal and a love for 
what he was to teach, which at once impressed and captivated 
his pupils, and inspired interest and enthusiasm on their part. 

Second, his profound, accurate, and available scholarship. 

Intellectually, Dr. Thornwell was from boyhood a genius. His 
mind possessed that quickness, that penetration, that ready 
grasp of the truth, which put him altogether out of the ordinary. 
As evidence of this, read the records of his boyhood's studies, 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



19 



and his letters written at that period. At seventeen he entered 
the Junior class of South Carolina College; and, though it was 
composed of forty-three young men, many of excellent ability 
and ambitious for its honors, only a few days after his admis- 
sion he was acknowledged to be its unquestioned leader; and in 
two years graduated at its head. He was from childhood 
throughout his life, a voracious reader, covering in his reading 
a wide field of literature; and he read with such absorption, and 
care, and intelligence, and comprehension, that whatever he read 
was ever afterwards his own. Thus, his knowledge of litera- 
ture, philosophy, and the Scriptures was not only profound, but 
such was his mastery of them, and the clearness of his disciplined 
memory, that they were always at hand for ready use. I could give 
from personal knowledge illustrations of this, in the readiness 
with which he could turn to any book in his well-selected library 
and show the author's treatment of the subject which happened 
to be in hand. 

And this thorough and practical scholarship could not fail to 
command the respect and confidence of his pupils. 

I well remember a little incident, the like of which is often 
told. Dr. Thornwell's text-book in theology was Calvin's In- 
stitutes, the meaning of which, even to the barest historical 
allusions, he brought out . with wonderful comprehension and 
thoroughness. And one day after a recitation, as several of 
us were talking over the lesson, my classmate, Dr. Jas. S. Cozby, 
remarked: "I tell you, brethren, that man, Jimmie Thornwell, 
finds in Calvin's Institutes what John Calvin himself never 
thought of." Such was the impression he made as a teacher. 

Third, his quick and marvellous apprehension of the needs 
of his students. 

I never heard, while sitting at his feet, anything about Ped- 
agogy and Child Study, as in this day. But, whether Dr. 
Thornwell had studied these subjects as such or not, with his 
own ardent, bright, impressible nature, he had traversed all 
the roads through which his pupils were passing ; and so, readily 
apprehended their difficulties, entered into their experiences, 
and knew just how to lead them out. Among my associates in 
the Seminary were many men of fine intellect, trained powers, 
and ardent study. And time and again I have known them to 
bring up their difficulties in the class room; they would state 



20 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



them perhaps bunglingly, hardly knowing themselves how to 
express them. But I never knew Dr. Thornwell to hesitate for 
a moment in reply. He seemed always to catch instantly their 
difficulties, and was able immediately to answer correctly and 
satisfactorily. 

Fourth, his living illustration of what he taught. 

As intimated before, Dr. ThornweU's mental constitution and 
habit were to appropriate to himself his acquirements, make 
them part and parcel of his being, and live out in his own 
life the truth that he had taken in. The logic which he studied 
he put into his sermons, lectures, and writings ; the meta- 
physics in which he reveled, found illustration in his own mental 
frames and character; and the Scriptures, which he loved, and 
searched, and preached, and taught, above everything else, he 
incorporated into his own life. Thus, he stood before his 
students as an exemplification — not perfect, indeed, as the Di- 
vine Master before His disciples, but, like Paul, whom they 
might follow even as he followed Christ — a striking embodi- 
ment, a living illustration, of the principles which he taught. 

Such was his thoroughness, that I confess I never made, 
and seldom ever heard, a satisfactory recitation to Dr. Thorn- 
well. But some way his principles of truth got hold o'f me ; 
and in my subsequent ministry I found myself ever building 
upon the lines he had marked out for me. 

Fifth, his method and spirit in the class-room. 

Dr. Thornwell usually employed a text-book, which formed 
the basis of his instructions; but he supplemented it by lectures, 
which were followed by questions — after the Socratic method. 
His lectures on Theology, which it was my privilege to hear, 
were always delivered with the utmost solemnity, reverence, 
and earnestness. They were like sermons from the pulpit, and 
the students felt their solemnizing, worshipful power as they 
heard him. But the ordinary recitations were characterized by 
a freedom and bonhomie which relieved them of monotony 
and tediousness, and always made them bright and interesting. 
He managed thus to get very near to his pupils, and to keep in 
close personal touch with them. 

Finally, his faculty of impressing himself upon others. 

Beyond any man whom I ever came in contact with, Dr. 
Thornwell possessed what we call "personal magnetism." His 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



21 



ardent temperament, his simple, easy sociability, and his capac- 
ity of entering readily into the feelings of others, made him a 
most attractive companion, won the closest and tenderest friend- 
ship of those associated with him, and naturally drew his 
students to him and exerted a powerful influence over them. 

This led, as we would expect, to a frequent, though generally 
unconscious, imitation of him both in and out of the pulpit, 
which was sometimes really amusing. But in a good way it 
accomplished much. Doubtless, no teacher or preacher who 
ever served our Church, so impressed his principles, his views, 
and his character upon his pupils and others associated with 
him as did Dr. Thornwell. This is recorded of him as College 
professor; and by personal observation and experience, I know 
it of him as Seminary professor. 

It is often said — and I can readily credit it — that it was 
Thornwell's stamp upon Dr. B. M. Palmer, who was so long 
and intimately associated with him, himself gifted and impres- 
sible, a fine subject for the stamp, which made him the grand and 
towering character and leader that he was. And, although Dr. 
Girardeau was never a pupil of Dr. Thornwell's, yet, through 
his fellowship with him for many years in the same Presbytery, 
and his profound admiration and passionate love of him, I am 
convinced that Thornwell largely shaped and promoted his 
noble career. And the same might be said, no doubt, of the 
late Drs. Thos. E. Peck, T. Dwight Witherspoon, Wm. T. 
Hall, and Henry F. Hoyt, and many others who have illumined 
the pages of our Church's history. 

And thus, as Preacher and Teacher, as well as Theologian and 
Ecclesiologist, Dr. Thornwell is worthy of genuine and hearty 
commemoration on this Centennial of his birth. Let us cherish 
tenderly and sacredly his memory, as we learn the many lessons 
of his illustrious career; and let us fondly and devotedly con- 
serve the grand and noble work which he performed for our 
State and for our Church. 



22 



Thomwell Centennial Addresses 



II. 

Dr. Thorn well as a Theologian 

REV. THORNTON WHALING, D. D., LL. D., COLUMBIA, S. C. 

The history of the world is largely the biography of its great 
men. Certain historic forces are to be discerned at work in any 
particular period, but these forces first become effective when 
they are incarnated in a human character and expounded in a 
human life. The most significant event which has occurred in 
Presbyterian circles in South Carolina during the last one hun- 
dred years was the appearance of James Henley Thornwell as a 
gift from God to His Church, with the divine mission of inter- 
preting anew in the light of the best philosophy and science of his 
day the essential contents of the Holy Word. And his signifi- 
cance is well-nigh exhausted in his master work as a theologian; 
for, while he was a preacher, teacher, writer and ecclesiastic, he 
was always the theological preacher, teacher, author and eccle- 
siastic. He touched no subject in any sphere at any time with- 
out pressing through the accidental and circumstantial to the 
fundamental and essential in reason and in the Scriptures upon 
which a valid conclusion alone could rest. 

Some of the marks which characterized Dr. Thornwell's theol- 
ogy were, first, that he was one of the most philosophic of theo- 
logians. He thought there was more laziness than piety, more 
stupidity than consecration in refusing to use the human 
reason up to the full limits of its power in every region of 
thought and of faith. Revelation, instead of denying the au- 
thority of reason, made its threefold appeal to this noblest fac- 
ulty, whose function it was first, to weigh the . evidences which 
proved the revelation true; second, to interpret the contents of 
the revelation, reducing them to logical and systematic form ; 
and, above all, thirdly, to evince the harmony between the 
teachings of the revealed word and the deliverances of right 
reason, at least to the extent of showing that there is no contra- 
diction between them. Some of his strongest contributions to 
theology are in this last field ; and more than one scholar and 
student has expressed the opinion that he reached his highest 
level in his famous discussion of "Morell's Philosophy of Relig- 
ion," notably the section entitled "Religion Psychologically Con- 
sidered," which is the most purely speculative and metaphysical 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



23 



of all his discussions. But, while strongly philosophic, Dr. 
Thornwell was also intensely biblical as a theologian. When 
Revelation was proven true by sufficient evidence, and its contents 
were- discovered by a just interpretation, the only legitimate 
procedure was for the human reason to check up its processes by 
the deliverance of the divine reason in the Revealed Word. A 
magnificent illustration of this true theological method, which 
combines absolute loyalty to the teachings of the divine reason 
with the most intense use of human reason up to its utmost 
possible limits, may be found in that monumental tract on 
"Election and Reprobation," which comes as near as any human 
document can do to saying the last word on the subject from 
both the rational and biblical points of view. The conciliation 
of reason and faith, the harmony of philosophy and theology, 
the proved concurrence of the human and divine reason presented 
to him no impossible task, but prescribed for him the chief work 
of the theologian, and at this task he worked with adamantine 
industry, with sanctified genius, with ample scholarship and with 
a liberal success, as shown by the four massive volumes of his 
"Collected Writings," and by his powerful influence* upon hosts 
of admiring students. 

Uniting these two traits of the genuine theologian, viz : that 
he was philosophic, yet biblical, he also combined two other 
marks which might seem inconsistent. He was a true and ra- 
tional conservative, who knew the results of the philosophic and 
theological thinking of the past, and who knew that Plato had 
not philosophized and Augustine theologized in vain. The 
catholic conclusions of that straight line of philosophers 
who have expounded the contents of the human reason were not 
regarded by him as brutum fulmen, and the oecumenical attain- 
ments of the Church in the Nicene Trinitarianism, and the 
Chalcedonian Christology and the Anselmic and Reformed 
Soteriology was not regarded by him as a delusive mirage. He 
borrowed no wood, hay or stubble from the dead, dry-as-dust, 
by-gone systems to build into his theological structure; but he 
borrowed many solid and precious stones from the great master 
builders of the past. Too true a scholar to be a radical, he must 
be a conservative; he had taken the measure of Calvin and 
Anselm, of Hamilton and Kant, and he knew that none of these 



24 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



mighty intellectual wrestlers had toiled for naught; he knew 
that they had been as successful as he could well hope to be, and 
he enriched his theology with the ripe results of their mental 
toil and travail in obedience to the great law that "other men 
labored and ye are entered into their labors." But he com- 
bined with this conservatism a striking originality, an almost 
daring theological initiative. If I will not be misunderstood, I 
may say Dr. Thornwell was a theological progressive; he did 
not believe that the goal of the full unfolding of the total con- 
tents of Revelation had yet been reached; there was rich ore in 
the Scriptures yet which had not been adequately mined, and 
through the stadium allotted to him he worked with a single eye 
and with consuming intensity at this very task of the fuller de- 
velopment in systematic and rational form of the Revelation 
found in God's Word. 

Some striking instances of this originality now fall to be con- 
sidered. First and foremost, I mention the large place and 
the novel treatment which he gave to Christian Ethics as a 
section of Systematic Theology. Ethics is divided into three 
parts: First, the Metaphysics of Ethics, or the Ontological 
predicates which underlie it; second, the Psychology of Ethics, 
or the Method in which moral distinctions are drawn ; and third, 
Practical Ethics, or a description and a classification of the 
duties which every man ought to perform. Quite a number of 
Dr. Thornwell's lectures are devoted to the first two divisions, 
the Metaphysic and the Psychology of Ethics, notably his re- 
markable lectures, (the two ablest, I think, which ever came 
from his pen), the one on Moral Government and the other the 
State and Nature of Sin ; in fact, the last six of his sixteen 
theological lectures are predominantly ethical; and he pub- 
lished a little treatise on Truth, which he described as giving 
one-third of a system of practical ethics, benevolence and justice 
being the other two-thirds. This is a striking innovation in theo- 
logical science. Compare the monumental system of Dr. Charles 
Hodge, who was his contemporary, and see how full it is of 
the dogmas of theology and how comparatively barren in the 
field of Christian ethics, and you get the right angle from which 
to view what I almost venture to call the striking theological 
invention of our Carolina expounder, viz: the marriage of theo- 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



25 



logical dogma to Scriptural or Christian ethics, so that dogmas 
and duties are really fused into unity in this system, which we 
name the Thornwellian Theology. Others had seen the im- 
portance of union in a speculative system of creed and deed, 
but the distinction of the largest success in achieving this union 
belongs to Dr. Thornwell, and it is no small part of his title to 
lasting renown. 

But in the field of theology purely considered, we find impres- 
sive illustrations of his individual initiative and theological 
progressiveness — for example, his definition and divisions of 
theology. Theology is the Science of Religion ; or it is that sys- 
tem of truth in its logical connection and dependence which, 
when spiritually perceived, results in true religion. There are 
two modes of knowing the truth, first, the speculative; second, 
the spiritual, which is faith or religion. It is only objectively, 
therefore, that theology is the science of religion. The question 
arises, is religion speculative or practical; the answer being it is 
neither exclusively, but both. It is neither exclusively cog- 
nition, feeling, nor volition; but it involves all three. It is the 
result of a life which fuses into a higher unity elements drawn 
from every part of human nature. We are to avoid the mistake 
of supposing that these separable elements are added to one an- 
other so that the religious man first knows, then feels, then wills ; 
but rather in the religious life marked by holiness, cognition, 
feeling, volition coexist in the holy activities of the religious 
man. We are to avoid the still more dangerous error that relig- 
ion can be divorced from its object, Who must contain in Himself 
the truth which the intellect cognizes, the beauty which the 
emotions embrace, the good toward which the will energizes. 
There can be no religion apart from God, the object, 
any more than apart from man, the subject, and the rela- 
tions between these two. The first division of theology, 
then, consists of the necessary relations between God 
and man expressed in moral government and regulated, by 
the principle of distributive justice. Man is God's creature and 
servant, and as long as he obeys will be rewarded; but as soon 
as he disobeys will be condemned. In a system of unmodified 
moral government probation would be endless; or, if terminated 
at all, would be terminated only by failure. But, while God 



26 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



cannot be less, He may be more than just — that is, He may be 
gracious. He may deign to alter the status of His creature 
and make him a son instead of a servant, and thus He limits the 
period of probation as to duration, promising to accept obedience 
for a limited period in place of obedience for all the endless 
future, thus introducing the idea of justification. Further, He 
limits the probation as to persons, making the natural head or 
progenitor of the race the representative of all other members 
of the race, promising to accept his obedience in the stead of the 
obedience of his descendants, thus introducing Federal Head- 
ship, with its features of Substitution and Imputation. Histor- 
ically, this was the first form of religion in our world, and we 
may call it the Covenant of Works, or natural religion, and its 
theology the theology of natural religion, which is the second 
great division of theology. But the covenant broke down 
through the failure of its Federal Head, leaving the purpose oi 
God to change the status of His creature from a servant to a 
son still unchanged, although His creature had now become His 
sinful creature. No new principle is applied in the modification 
of Moral Government, which has to be made to fit the status of 
a sinful creature. Federal Headship is still the master key; 
God has never dealt with our race on any other principle. Only 
two probations have ever been offered, the one in the first 
Adam, the other in the second Adam; so that the Adamic prin- 
ciple governs the religious history of our world. The justifica- 
tion of many through the obedience of one is still the plan — has 
always been God's plan. Some new features, however, appear for 
the first time. Election, or the choice of those to be represented ; 
atonement for the removal for guilt : regeneration for the removal 
of corruption, are added. And we have supernatural religion, or 
the Covenant of Grace, and its theology, the theology of super- 
natural religion, or the third great division of Theology. 

All this sounds simple to us now, but Dr. Thornwell has this 
distinction, that he is the first man in the whole history of theo- 
logical thinking that put these things in this way and said them 
after his fashion. 

In still further illustration, his teachings upon the funda- 
mental question of Theology, the existence of God, combines the 
elements of completeness, simplicity and novelty. God's exist- 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 27 

ence is not known by intuition, else there would be a God-con- 
sciousness, in which God as an object was immediately known, 
but "no man hath seen God at any time." Nor is God's existence 
established by a process of syllogistic reasoning, and the com- 
mon theological arguments for His existence are of value only 
as fully unfolding the contents of the knowledge already pos- 
sessed. But positively God's existence is reached by immediate 
inference necessarily drawn from the primitive beliefs or faith 
of the mind. There are many arguments, but only one proof, 
and that consists of the immediate and direct inference drawn 
from the soul's necessary beliefs as they are developed by ex- 
perience. The so-called arguments for the being of God are 
valid only when we consider them as statements of some 
aspect of these immediate inferences. The cosmological argu- 
ment is the inference drawn from a necessary faith in causa- 
tion. The moral argument is an inference from faith in a moral 
law to a law-giver and judge. The ontological argument is an 
inference from belief in the two correlatives, the finite and in- 
finite, to the existence of both. The union of scientific accuracy 
and amazing simplicity in this position render it a marvel that 
no theologian had anticipated him in this teaching, but it is the 
prerogative of genius, especially when illumined by divine wis- 
dom, to unravel the most intricate phenomena by the discovery 
of some law whose combined universality and simplicity pro- 
vokes wonder and which remains forever afterward a part of 
the spiritual riches of the race. Dr. Thornwell's thesis that 
God's existence is an immediate inference drawn in some new 
aspect from each one of the mind's primitive beliefs in turn and 
necessarily developed by experience, has left the theologian only 
the work of illustration and exposition in this field. 

Again, his views upon the Freedom of the Human Will, show 
that he was the master instead of the slavish expounder o'f a 
system inherited from the past. Determinism, or the theory that 
the dispositions of the soul infallibly control the volitions of the 
will, might have applied to the case of Adam if he had main- 
tained his original condition; and if the theory of Determinism 
had been universally true, then Adam would have remained holy 
until this day. But in the strategic case of our first parent, this 
theory of the will as a complete theory, was shattered into frag- 



28 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



ments; for Adam's dispositions exhypothesi were all holy, but 
his volition was altogether sinful. So that, without reluctance or 
hesitation, he affirmed the self-determination of the will in the 
supreme case of the first sin of our first parent. This self-de- 
termination of the will, designed to fit for probation, was lost 
tvhen the probation was ended by failure and the will became 
penally enslaved to the evil dispositions it had originated ; but to 
unite Calvinism to the out-worn and exploded dogma of Deter- 
minism was a measure to which Dr. Thornwell would give 
"place by way of subjection, no, not for an hour." It is one of 
the unfortunate features of our doctrinal history that quite a 
number of exponents of our theology have allowed this specu- 
lative dogma of Determinism — of doubtful philosophic reputa- 
tion — to become identified in many minds with our system of 
faith and doctrine. The splendid service of Jonathan Edwards 
must be largely discounted by the rigorous and universal deter- 
minism which he made central and controlling in his philosophy 
and theology, and with which he has poisoned much of the 
thinking of those who are in the line of development from him; 
and, in striking contrast, the transcendent service of Dr. Thorn- 
well is greatly enhanced by his demonstration that our theology 
must expel this alien intruder by substituting for it a more com- 
prehensive and truly philosophic and scriptural doctrine of Hu- 
man Freedom. 

But the most valuable work of our master Theologian was ac- 
complished in the Theology of Redemption by the supreme and 
regulative place which he assigned Adoption. In fact, the organic 
and unifying principle in Thornwell's theology is found in his 
doctrine of Adoption. The question proposed, both in natural 
religion and in supernatural religion, was the same, viz : how may 
a servant, through adoption, become a son. In the Covenant of 
Works the question relates to a righteous servant; in the Cove- 
nant of Grace to an unholy and condemned servant; but the end 
proposed in each case is the same, the change from the status 
of a servant to that of a son through adoption. From this point 
of view, Election is election "into the adoption of sons"; Justi- 
fication is a means devised by which the standing of the servant 
may be so assured that adoption to sonship shall certainly follow ; 
Federal Headship again is a sublime means which the adoptive 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



29 



decree utilizes in order that the one who is represented shall re* 
ceive this gracious benefit of the change from the status of a 
servant to that of a son; Regeneration is the effective way in 
which the spirit of sonship is made real in those who have 
secured the adoption of sons. No other system of theology has 
assigned so large a place to this ruling conception which occupies 
so supreme a position in the Scriptures and in religious experi- 
ence; and in making Adoption central, Dr. Thbrnwell is at once 
the more scriptural and the more philosophic. This is his chief 
achievement as a Theologian, making a distinct advance upon 
the Reformed Soteriology and that of all subsequent thinkers, by 
giving Adoption the regal position assigned to it in revelation, 
and belonging to it in Christian experience, and which theology 
ought to recognize in its systematic construction of Scripture and 
experience by giving Adoption the same influential and regulative 
place in the doctrinal system. 

But I cannot speak further; my time and your patience for- 
bid. "If I have done well and as is fitting the story, it is that 
what I desired; but if slenderly and meanly, it is that which I 
could attain unto." 

In closing, I remark that Dr. Thornwell was fortunate in at 
least one of his successors in the chair of theology in the Colum- 
bia Seminary; for Dr. John L. Girardeau, while not a slavish 
copyist, was a true disciple of his famous predecessor ; and with 
equal gifts of mind and graces of heart carried to still further 
development the theologizing which he inherited with his chair. 
The theology of Thornwell and Girardeau is one, and seldom in 
the history of the Church have two minds so similarly en- 
dowed and equally gifted labored in such close conjunction and 
inner harmony in theological construction and work. Dr. Thorn- 
well was fortunate, too, in having a great historic Church born 
just at the right moment to receive the impress of his genius 
and spirit; and in some just sense the Southern Presbyterian 
Church is his colossal monument; and John Knox is no more 
completely incarnate in the Church in Scotland than is "James 
Henley Thornwell embodied in the Presbyterian Church of the 
South." That great Church is fortunate beyond all speaking in 
having as its representative Theologian and Ecclesiastic a man of 
his type; ample in scholarship, profound in research, accurate in 



3° 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



reasoning, conservative in temper and yet progressive in spirit; 
above all, saintly in life, the expression in character and devo- 
tion and intensity of consecration of that mighty system of doc- 
trine which not only mastered his intellect, but moulded all the 
deepest springs of his innermost personality. And thus the Theo- 
logian was the saint, who poured out through press and pulpit 
and professor's chair the combined stores of learning and genius 
and exalted saintliness. The Synod of South Carolina, therefore, 
one hundred years after his birth, with profound appreciation of 
his unrivalled influence and imperial services, gives devout thanks 
to Almighty God for the gracious gift of James Henley Thorn- 
well, the Theologian. 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



3i 



III. 

Dr. Thornwell as an Ecclesiologist 

REV. A. M. FRASER, D. D., STAUNTON, VA. 

Dr. Thornwell was not first of all an ecclesiologist. He was 
first of all an eminent Christian, a mighty preacher of the gos- 
pel, a profound theologian and philosopher; and afterwards an 
ecclesiologist. His genius, his taste and his vocation all led him 
to the direct study of other subjects, and his work as an ex- 
pounder of Church government was incidental and even acci- 
dental. But, as often happens, the by-product of his genius left 
as lasting and beneficient an impression upon the Church as those 
services upon which he consciously concentrated his powers. 

His work in Ecclesiology was original. The mark he has left 
on the organization and work of the Church is distinct; it is of 
inestimable value, and we trust it will endure till that time" of 
which the Scriptures tell us, when the Head of the Church shall 
present it to Himself "a glorious Church, not having spot, or 
wrinkle, or any such thing" ; but "holy and without blemish." 

I would not imply, however, that Dr. Thornwell himself dis- 
paraged the study of Church government, or that he thought it 
unworthy of his greatest powers. In his famous debate with 
Dr. Hodge in the Rochester Assembly of i860, to which I shall 
have occasion to refer repeatedly, while he declared that the doc- 
trines of grace were of more importance than the doctrines of 
government, yet, he claimed that the doctrines of government 
were second in importance only to the doctrines of grace. He 
believed that Church government was an essential and insep- 
arable part of a revealed gospel. All those splendid descriptions 
which the Bible applies to the Church he accepted in all the full- 
ness and accuracy of their meaning. To him the Church was a 
new creation, rivaling in splendor and beauty the original creation, 
at which "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of 
God shouted for joy"; it was the "Kingdom of Heaven," "the 
House of God," "a glorious Church," "the Church of the Living 
God," "the pillar and ground of the truth," "the temple of the 
Holy Ghost," "the body of Christ," "the fullness of Him that 
filleth all in all," "the Bride of the Lamb," "adorned as a Bride 
to meet the Bridegroom," whose never fading bridal freshness 
and radiance and beauty will make her the most resplendent 



32 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



created object in Heaven. Her constitution and her laws, her 
officers and her courts, her administration and her discipline, her 
worship and her fellowship, her labors and her achievements, 
her tears and her prayers, her struggles and her victories, all ex- 
cited his admiration and devotion as reflecting the divine glory 
of Him who is her Author and her Object, her indwelling King 
and her exceeding great reward. 

To him, all that is revealed concerning the Church expressed 
the divine sense of the beautiful, the orderly, the puissant and 
the enduring. It thrilled with the joy of the divine heart and 
pulsated with the life of God. So that the peroration of his 
great speech in the Rochester Assembly, a discussion of the 
mere mechanical structure and operations of the Church, is said 
to have been "a thrilling appeal that moved all hearts, holding 
the Assembly and the thronged galleries in breathless attention." 

In the sphere of Ecclesiology, Dr. Thornwell was a happy com- 
bination of the thinker and the man of action without impairing 
his superiority in either sphere. As a thinker, there was no sub- 
ject too abstruse or intricate for him. As an equal with equals 
he could commune with Sir William Hamilton, and Kant, and 
Aristotle. At his death it was printed concerning him in Great 
Britain that America regarded him as "an incarnation of sheer 
intelligence." While this expression did not do justice to the 
depth and warmth of his emotional nature, or to his mastery of 
questions of practical administration, it did not overstate Amer- 
ica's estimate of his intellect. Dr. T. C. Johnson, the biographer 
of Dr. Dabney, says that in the nineteenth century America pro- 
duced three theologians: Shedd, Thornwell and Dabney. He 
says that Dr. Dabney' s writings entitle him to the first place 
amongst these three, but adds : "It is not forgotten that Dr. 
Thornwell was cut off early in life." Dr. Peck forty years ago 
said that three South Carolinians had attained to preeminence in 
literary work. These three are John C. Calhoun, Hugh S. 
Legare and James H. Thornwell. When such a mind was turned 
to Church government, from the necessity of nature it must reason, 
it must be exhaustive, analytic, discriminating, making nice dis- 
tinctions, tracing things back to their origin and forward to 
their results. There were giants in those days. The Alexan- 
ders, father and sons, Drs. Hodge and Magill were at Prince- 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



33 



ton; Drs. Breckinridge and Robinson at Danville, in Kentucky; 
Drs. B. M. Smith and Dabney at Union, in Virginia ; Drs. Edward 
Robinson and H. B. Smith at Union, in New York; Drs. W. 
G. T. Shedd, Edward A. Park and Austin Phelps at Auburn; 
Drs. Adger, Palmer and Thornwell at Columbia, in South 
Carolina. These men did not think it unworthy of their great 
learning and ability to debate the nicest distinctions in Church 
government, even though their lives may have been devoted to 
the study of the larger subject of Systematic Theology. They 
well knew that, however acute might be the angle of divergence 
between truth and error at the beginning, the lines had only to be 
projected far enough to measure the whole diameter between 
absolute truth and ruinous falsehood. With all Church history 
spread out before them as a panorama, seeing the errors, the 
tyrannies, the corruptions and the loss of spiritual power that had 
so often entered the Church as a result of what at first seemed 
the most trivial and innocent innovations, they were led to re- 
peat with the frequency of a motto, "Beware of the beginnings of 
error!" Though but fifty years have passed since Thornwell 
died, the time has none too soon arrived for recalling the man 
and his mission. Has there not in these modern times set in a 
mighty tide of impatience with principles and distinctions in 
Church government, and a demand for the common sense, and 
the practical, and for the doing of things, as if anything could be 
common sense that is out of harmony with the supreme reason, 
or anything practical that is not true to the ideal, or anything 
really done till it is rightly done? And do we not need to gaze, 
and ponder, and pray, and learn anew the lesson that zeal is safe 
only when guided by knowledge, and that it is not only well to 
do what is right, but of the last importance to do right things in 
the right way? 

But Dr. Thornwell was a man of action as well as a thinker. 
Whilst he must know the theory, he was no mere theorizer;' 
whilst he must determine the doctrine, he was no mere doc- 
trinaire; whilst he must see the vision, he was far from being 
visionary; and whilst he must discover the principle, it was in 
order to insure the practice and the results. Accordingly, when 
the Assembly in Lexington, Ky., in 1857, found the Church 
at a crisis where it must pass through the ordeal of recasting its 
rules of discipline, the moderator promptly and confidently se- 



34 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



lected Dr. Thornwell to be the chairman of the committee on 
revison, and the one to do the work. This undertaking required 
breadth of view, a logical and self -consistent plan, a wide 
knowledge of the practice of courts, a keen sense of human 
rights, a spiritual insight into the meaning of ecclesiastical law, 
a familiarity with the Scriptures, a capacity for tireless patience 
in the elaboration of details, and withal a literary style at once 
compact, comprehensive and perspicuous. The moderator, in 
writing to Dr. Thornwell afterwards concerning his appoint- 
ment, said: "I was strongly drawn towards you that night, by 
an influence which seemed to me more like a special divine influ- 
ence than anything I remember to have experienced during 
my whole life." The appointment gave universal satisfaction in 
the Church, which felt no uneasiness since the work was in his 
hands. 

Let us pause just here to catch a picture of Dr. Thornwell as 
he tranquilly crosses the threshold of his stirring career. When 
he is only twenty-four years of age and has been an ordained 
minister less than two years, he is sent by the Presbytery of 
Bethel as a commissioner to the General Assembly. It is the 
historic Assembly of 1837, which meets in the city of Philadel- 
phia, and which witnesses the debate between the Old and the 
New School parties and ends in the disruption of the Church. He 
is a man of medium height, of spare build and somewhat stooped 
in his carriage. An abundance of soft, black hair is smoothly 
brushed down around his face in long, ample folds, and meeting 
his short, black beard on the side of his face, gives the effect of 
a dark oval frame about his none too healthy countenance. His 
eyelids droop when his countenance is in repose, and through the 
narrow opening between them can be seen rich, kind, brilliant 
dark eyes that not only give tone to the face, but also transfigure 
the whole man. A stranger, seeing those eyes, will surely look 
again. When his mind begins to work, the eyelids no longer 
droop, and the eyes dilate and grow. At this time he writes, "I have 
not opened my mouth in the Assembly except to give a vote, and 
I do not expect to do so." The debate is the culmination of a 
long and heated controversy and the excitement in the Assembly 
is intense; yet he has no speech to make, no thought of electri- 
fying the Assembly, or of making a name for himself ; no conceit 
of a mission to lead the Church. He feels a very weighty respon- 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



35 



sibility, it is true, but that responsibility is all discharged when 
he has listened, and learned, and thought, and prayed, and cast 
his vote aright. A refreshing example of the modesty of youth- 
ful genius ! But Dr. Thornwell was not to remain a silent listener 
to the debates of the Church. In the meeting of the Synod of 
South Carolina and Georgia, in the fall of 1838, we find him 
conspicuous in the arena of debate. From that time on till he 
breathed his last, in 1862, his white plume always marked the 
thickest of the fight. In the Cincinnati Assembly, in 1845, he 
was the most commanding personality in the body, though only 
thirty-two years of age. In the Richmond Assembly, in 1847, 
he was chosen moderator, when only thirty-four years of age — 
probably the youngest person who ever presided over so august 
an ecclesiastical court. Hear these fine sentiments from Dr. 
Peck: "There are no contests more interesting than those of 
the forum and the deliberative assembly; no battles so grand as 
those waged for principle ; no sufferings so sacred as those which 
are endured for truth; no struggles so suited to elicit human 
sympathy as those which are maintained with the tyranny of 
the devil and sin and hell, those which take place in the arena of 
the soul itself, between powers once pervaded by the spirit of 
unity in the service of their God, but now split asunder in conse- 
quence of the fatal schism effected by the fall. Such is the 
drama that moves before us as the story of Thornwell's life un- 
folds itself." 

Now that I come to recount Dr. Thornwell's contributions to 
the science of Church government, I shall be compelled by all 
the conditions under which I speak to confine myself to a simple 
recital of the salient points of the system he expounded. I 
greatly regret that Dr. Whaling, in his address this morning on 
"Dr. Thornwell as a Theologian," restrained himself from dis- 
cussing the vital relation of Dr. Thornwell's theology to his eccle- 
siology. That relation exists, and Dr. Whaling is so competent 
to discuss it. I feel obliged to choose a different line of thought. 
I will give the summary as briefly as the subject matter will 
permit, but as fully as the time will allow. 

1. At the foundation of Dr. Thornwell's theory of the Church 
lay an absolute conviction that the Bible is the very Word of 
God, which reaches us through human channels, it is true, but is 
wholly uncontaminated with human imperfections by coming in 



36 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



that way. Being the Word of God, it is free from all error and 
becomes a perfect and sufficient rule of faith and practice in all 
matters of religion. To questions of Church government, as to 
all others, he applied that noble sentiment of our Shorter Cate- 
chism: "The Word of God, which is contained in the Scrip- 
tures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only rule to direct 
us how we may glorify and enjoy Him." 

He believed that in this infallible and authoritative Word oi 
God he had found a form of government prescribed for the 
Church. Having found it there, it bound his conscience as abso- 
lutely and as imperiously controlled him in thought and actions as 
anything else he found there. With him it was not enough to 
say that the Church is "a divine institution." The State also is 
a divine institution. The State is an ordinance of God in the 
sense that men are so related to each other that government is a 
necessity; in the sense that men are so constituted that they are 
naturally drawn together to live in masses or communities and 
seek a form of government; in the sense that God has endowed 
man with sufficient reason and light of nature to construct a 
government for himself ; and in the sense that a government so 
constructed becomes the ordinance of God to all who are subject 
to it which they are under obligation to obey, but not in the sense 
that any particular form of government has been prescribed by 
Him. But the Church, on the contrary, is a divine institution in 
exactly the sense in which the State is not, namely: that God 
has prescribed a particular form of government for it. Here 
again an important distinction must be made. In the Rochester 
Assembly, in i860, in his debate with Dr. Hodge, Dr. Hodge 
agreed with him that the Church was a divine, institution, but 
held that it was divine only in the sense that the general princi- 
ples of Church government are given in the Scriptures, and not 
in the sense that a particular form of government is commanded 
there. Dr. Thornwell, in reply, made the distinction between 
"regulative principles" and "constitutive principles." In his 
view, what Dr. Hodge contended for was merely "regulative 
principles," which prescribe the end of Church government with- 
out prescribing the means or the particular constitution of the 
Church by which the end was to be reached. On the contrary, 
he himself saw in the Bible "constitutive principles" of Church 
government, which prescribed the exact structure of the govern- 



Thorfiwell Centennial Addresses 



37 



ment, its officers, its courts and its laws. So that two formulas 
came to be distinctive of the two sides in the debate. Dr. Hodge 
maintained that whatever in the matters of Church government 
is not forbidden by the Scriptures is by implication permitted. 
Dr. Thornwell contended that whatever is not expressly com- 
manded in the Scriptures is by implication forbidden. He be- 
lieved that whatever is needful for Church government is either 
expressly set down in the Bible, or maj be deduced from what 
is set down by good and necessary inference. He believed that 
the function of the Church is, as our Standards express it, "min- 
istrative and declarative." It is declarative because the Church 
has no authority to originate truth, but only to declare what it 
finds in the Word of God. It is ministrative in the sense that it 
has no authority to make laws, but only to administer those 
laws it finds in the "Word of God. He believed man incapable 
of constructing a wise government for the Church. "Man cannot 
be the counsellor of God," he would say. Hear some sentences 
of his own: "The Word of God uniformly represents man as 
blind and ignorant, incapable of seeing afar off, perverted in 
judgment, warped in understanding, seared in conscience and 
misguided in affections : and therefore requiring a heavenly 
teacher and a heavenly guide at every step of his progress. He 
has no light in himself in reference to divine things. He is a 
child, a fool, to be taught and led. Utterly unqualified by the 
narrowness of his faculties to foresee the future, he cannot even 
tell what is good for himself all the days of his vain life, which 
he spends as a shadow, and much less can he determine upon a 
large scale what is expedient for the Church of God. Surrounded 
by natural darkness, he has a light, most graciously bestowed, 
which penetrates the gloom — even the sure word of prophecy — 
and to this he is required to give heed." Referring to the Bible 
as a bulwark against foolish and ruinous innovations of man, 
he says : "To remove a single chink from the obstructions 
which bank up a mighty body of water is to prepare the way 
for the desolations of a flood. The only safe principle is the 
noble principle of Chillingworth, 'The Bible, the Bible only, is 
the religion of Protestants.' When this great sun arises, all 
meaner lights retire, as the stars disappear before the dawning 
day." He trembled at the words of Christ, "Howbeit in vain 
do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments 



38 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



of men"; and such warnings of the Scriptures as that found on 
the last page of the sacred volume : "If any man shall add unto 
these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written 
in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of 
the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of 
the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things 
which are written in this book." The Church is, therefore, not 
a voluntary organization, but a divine institution. It is volun- 
tary only in the sense that man has the option of coming within 
the Church to the salvation of his soul, or remaining out of it to 
his everlasting undoing. When, in the exercise of this free choice 
he comes within the Church, that which he enters is a divine 
thing — divine in every fiber of its structure and in every move- 
ment of its life. 

This principle is fundamental among us now. Our appeal is 
immediately to the Scriptures, and what we do not find there for 
us does not exist. It is an accepted principle, a settled question, 
and yet, in a large measure, it holds this place amongst us as a 
result of Dr. Thornwell's teaching. It was not accepted in the 
old Church. It was rejected by the Rochester Assembly by a 
large vote. How lightly we sometimes hold those principles 
for which the fathers risked so much ! In defense of this truth, 
Dr. Thornwell entered the lists of debate with Dr. Charles 
Hodge, who was one of the most learned theologians of any age, 
who was intrenched in all the prestige that belongs to the Pro- 
fessor of Systematic Theology in the leading Tehological Sem- 
inary in the United States, and in the esteem of the large number 
of ministers who had been educated by him and many of whom 
were members of this Assembly. 

3. As to the particular form of government which Dr. Thornwell 
believed to be revealed in the Scriptures, it should be of interest 
to all students of the Science of Government to know that it was 
the highest form of a representative republic. He was fond of 
quoting Milton's panegyric upon that form of government, that 
it was "held by the wisest men of all ages, the noblest, the manliest, 
the equalest, the justest government, the most agreeable to all 
due liberty and proportioned equality, both human and civil and 
Christian, most cherishing to virtue and true religion." But 
there are two interpretations of the representative republic. One 
is that it is a mere substitute for popular democracy. It is held 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



39 



that because of the inconvenience of having the multitude as- 
semble in one place to participate in the government, the repre- 
sentative is chosen to act for them. He is a mere delegate or 
deputy, empowered to do no more than execute the wishes of 
those who have chosen him and express their opinions. Accord- 
ing to the other interpretation, the representative is selected for 
his individual capacity to deal with questions of government. 
He is not merely to record what his constitutents wish, but to 
confer with other representatives, to learn, to weigh, to deliber- 
ate, to decide and to act, not merely in accordance with the 
caprices of the masses, but in accordance with their best interests, 
as those interests are determined from his more advantageous 
point of observation. This is that splendid ideal of government 
expounded and acted upon by both Burke and Pitt at dramatic 
crises in their public careers. It is this latter ideal of govern- 
ment which Dr. Thornwell saw in the Scriptures, a government 
of elders or presbyters chosen by the people, chosen for their 
age and experience, or because they possessed those qualifications 
which are usually associated with age or are the result of experi- 
ence. There is, however, this marked difference between this 
divinely given mode of government and its counterpart in the 
State. In the State, the representative rules for the benefit of 
the people in accordance with a humanly made constitution, 
which he interprets and applies by merely human reason and the 
light of nature. In the Church, the ruler rules by a divine con- 
stitution and is guided by divine laws interpreted for him by the 
Spirit of God. The function of the people is to elect the rulers 
and nothing more. Having been elected, the elder becomes the 
deputy of God, whose sole function is to learn and apply the 
law of God as that is revealed with sufficient fullness in the Bible. 
If that be the best human government in which the wisest and 
best men are selected to rule according to their best information 
and judgment, how vastly more splendid a thing is this God- 
given government in which the most godly and most discreet 
men are selected to rule by a divinely given and divinely inter- 
preted law ! Consider another aspect of this question. It is ad- 
mitted on all sides that the strongest and most effective form of 
government would be the absolute monarchy, provided the 
monarch were wise and good. But seeing there can be no secur- 
ity for the wisdom and the character of the monarch, the repre- 



40 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



sentative republic is the best form to secure the equilibrium of 
efficiency and human freedom. It is noteworthy that this Scrip- 
tural government provides for the advantages of both, while a 
republic in its human administration does not cease to be an 
absolute monarchy, inasmuch as it is the Kingdom of Christ. 

So much for the general theory of it. As to its mechanism, 
there are two orders of officers: the deacons, to minister on the 
temporal side of the Church's life, and the ruling elders or pres- 
byters, to rule. Of the presbyters there are two classes, those 
who rule only and those who also preach the Word, or "labor in 
the Word and doctrine," as well as rule. The preachers exercise 
their special function of preaching severally or as individuals, 
but the elders, whether preachers or not, exercise their function 
of rule jointly in courts called Presbyteries, because composed 
of presbyters. When the ministers and the ruling elders meet in 
the courts, they meet on a plane of absolute equality of authority. 
Each local congregation has its Presbytery, called for conveni- 
ence the "Session," composed of the pastor and his associate 
ruling elders. Where there are a number of neighboring con- 
gregations, a higher Presbytery may be formed of representa- 
tives of the sessions and called specially by the name "Presby- 
tery." When the area is enlarged, a number of Presbyteries may 
be formed, uniting in a still higher court, which is called a 
"Synod." A number of Synods unite in a higher court, called 
the "General Assembly." And thus the system is elastic and so 
susceptible of expansion as at length to embrace all the Chris- 
tians in the world and illustrate the universality and unity of" the 
Church. 

Let us examine another aspect of the case. It has been found 
by reason and experience that the representative republic may 
be still further reinforced and strengthened if, instead of com- 
mitting the whole authority to one body of legislators, there 
are two bodies, like our Senate and House of Representatives, 
of co-ordinate jurisdiction, whose members are elected on a dif- 
ferent principle and have a different tenure of office. Dr. 
Thornwell found the counterpart of that in the Presbyterian 
system of the Scriptures. We do not have two separate and 
co-ordinate courts for the same territory, but we do have two 
classes of presbyters, those who rule only and those who also 
preach. Sitting in the same court and possessed of equal au- 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



4* 



thority, they are of two classes, with a different tenure of office 
and elected on a different principle, and so regard all questions 
from a somewhat different point of view. 

Out of the promulgation of these views by Doctors Thorn- 
well and Breckinridge and others grew a long controversy as to 
the nature of the office of ruling elder. Is the ruling elder the 
same as the presbyter spoken of in the Bible, or is the term 
presbyter confined to the minister of the Word? Is the presence 
of a ruling elder necessary to make a quorum in a Church court? 
Has the ruling elder a right to lay his hands on the head of a 
minister in ordination? To some it may seem a trivial question 
and one unworthy of the serious attention of great men, whether 
or not the elder may lay hands on a minister ; but back of it lay 
questions that reach to the foundation of things : the question of 
what God meant by the office of presbyter; the question of the 
meaning of the ministry of the Word. Is it a governing caste, 
with exclusive privileges and a special official grace, or are the 
officers (the presbyters, including both preachers and ruling 
elders) mere ministers or servants, all alike representatives of 
the people and chosen by them ; the question of the nature of 
ordination, Is it a charm or a magical rite by which an official 
character is imparted, or is it merely an act of government, a 
formality by which those already in office induct a new officer 
into office ; the question of the place of the people in the 
Church. Are they merely the subjects of the Church, or do they 
compose the Church, whose ministers and servants the officers 
are? This subject also was included in the Rochester debate. 
Dr. Hodge contended that the elder was merely the delegate of 
the people to offset the power of what he called the "'clergy"; 
that the elders being of a different order from the minister could 
not impose hands on a minister in ordination on the ground that 
they could not confer on others what they did not themselves 
possess. Dr. Thornwell charged that such views were prelatical 
and claimed that papacy itself was introduced into the Church by 
the gradual denial to the elders of the right to impose hands in 
ordination. Dr. ThornwelTs views on this subject seem to us 
now as the simple primer of Church government. Few of us 
have ever known anything else ; but there are brethren in this 
Synod who remember the controversy, and in other days heard 
the contention that an elder had no right to impose hands in the 



4 2 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



ordination of a minister, because he could not impart to another 
what he did not possess himself. 

4. For this Church, thus organized, he also found in the 
Word of God a specific vocation and a circumscribed sphere of 
action. The argument that the Church is a divine institution 
for the benefit of man, and that therefore the Church may em- 
bark in anything that is for the benefit of man, had no weight 
with him. The argument that the Church is a moral institution, 
and can do anything to advance morality, had no weight with 
him. The argument that the Church is spiritual, and may employ 
any innocent means it chooses for the accomplishment of spiritual 
results, did not weigh with him. In answer to the question, 
"What is the purpose of the Church, for what was it intended, 
and what may it do?" he repaired to his guiding principle, "The 
Bible, the Bibly only, is the religion of Protestants," and sought 
for light in the Scriptures. There he found that the Church is 
exclusively religious in its organization and its methods. The 
Church has four clearly defined duties: First, it is to preach 
the gospel of free salvation through the atonement of Christ: 
"The Spirit and the Bride say come." Second, it is to gather, 
educate and discipline believers: "The edifying of the body of 
Christ," the apostle declares, is one of the purposes of Church 
organization. Third, it is to be a witness for the truth; it is 
called "the pillar and ground of the truth." Fourth, it is to take 
order for the extension of the kingdom into all the world : "Go 
ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature." 
To give merely secular education, to cultivate the merely natural 
virtues, to engage in a beneficence that terminates in physical, 
social and civic betterment, but does not seek the salvation of the 
soul from sin and ruin; these, nor one nor all of them, are within 
the sphere of the Church's mission. Touching them all, he would 
use the language of Christ, "Let the dead bury .their dead." 
Hence we find him opposing all schemes for enlisting the Church 
in secular education. He opposed any direct alliance between 
the Church and temperance societies or other societies for mere 
moral reform. He likewise opposed making the Church ancillary 
to voluntary benevolent societies. Were he living in this day, he 
would, no doubt, be opposed to "social service" as a part of the 
Church's work, scientific sanitation, wholesome food, social pur- 
ity, temperance, proper relations between capital and labor. He 



Thomwell Centennial Addresses 43 



would be opposed to the "institutional church," in which the 
Church is threatened to be strangled by the institutions. He would 
be opposed to "civic righteousness" as a part of the Church's 
work, the purifying of political methods, the enactment of better 
laws, the enforcement of existing laws. It was not that a man 
of his transcendent learning depreciated education, or that a man 
of his exalted sense of virtue and of the dignity of manhood 
was indifferent to sobriety and its kindred virtues ; or that a man 
of his sympathetic nature failed to respond to human suffering. 
But what commission had the Church to teach the classics or the 
sciences or profane history? What commission had the Church 
to seek an improvement in morals only, leaving men dead in 
trespasses and in sins, healing the hurt a little, while it was em- 
powered of Heaven to offer the renewal of the whole man 
after the image of Christ? Accordingly, in the Cincinnati Assem- 
bly, where he was a commanding influence, though not a member 
of the committee on slavery, he was consulted by that committee 
and prepared the report which it presented and which the As- 
sembly adopted, and which fixed the attitude of the Church to- 
wards slavery for years to come. And in the Baltimore Assem- 
bly of 1848, in a report on temperance societies, speaking of the 
Church, he uses this language : "Its ends are holiness of life and 
the manifestation of the riches and glory of divine grace, and not 
simply morality, decency and good order, which may to some ex- 
tent be secured without faith in a Redeemer, or the transforming 
efficiency of the Holy Spirit." And in the Indianapolis Assem- 
bly of 1859 occurred a most dramatic incident in this connection. 
Exhausted by his Assembly duties and by loss of sleep, he sat by 
his friend, Dr. Palmer, leaned his head upon his shoulder and fell 
asleep. A report was presented in which it was proposed that 
the Assembly formally give its countenance to a society for the 
colonization of Southern slaves in Africa. Dr. Palmer aroused 
him and told him what was pending and urged him to take the 
platform at once and speak, since he had given special study to 
the questions involved. He did so. To speak upon such short 
notice and under those trying physical conditions, to overcome 
the natural prejudice against a Southern man and a slave owner, 
to win confidence in his patriotism, to command an interest in the 
abstract principles in the case, to neutralize the political enthusi- 
asm upon which the advocates of the report had counted, to 



44 Thornwell Centennial Addresses 

snatch complete victory from foregone defeat, to do all this in a 
brief speech and sit down amidst uncontrollable applause, was 
one of the most brilliant achievements ever witnessed in a delib- 
erative Assembly. 

But of all the questions of this character, tending to obscure 
the purely spiritual nature of the Church's mission and work, 
that which far exceeds all others in practical menace is the 
question of the relations of Church and State. The danger in 
this case is enhanced by a multitude of circumstances. No service 
of Dr. Thornwell's to the cause of the Church was more im- 
portant than his elucidation of this intricate subject. To deal 
properly with such a subject, it was necessary not only to have a 
knowledge of Church law, but also of the nature and history of 
civil government. In this respect Dr. Thornwell was fully 
qualified to cope with the question. Mr. Calhoun said of him, 
after his first interview : "I was not prepared for the thorough 
acquaintance he exhibited with all the topics that are generally 
familiar only to statesmen." Chancellor Job Johnston said of his 
article on the state of the country: "I took up the article with 
trepidation, fearing that a divine would make a muddle of the 
question, but I found it a model state paper." He held to the 
absolute severance of Church and State — the pure spirituality of 
the one, the distinct secularity of the other. 

The occasion which led to Dr. Thornwell's greatest activity in 
this connection was the breaking out of the War Between the 
States. When the General Assembly met in Philadelphia in 1861 
Fort Sumter had just fallen. The heart of the North was inflamed. 
One church body after another had proven a victim. It had 
been hoped that the doors of the Presbyterian Assembly would 
be barred against political passion. Excitement throughout the 
country was volcanic. The increase of the excitement within 
the Assembly itself could be measured from day to day. Tele- 
graphic communication was kept up between members of the 
Assembly and members of the President's cabinet touching the 
kind of deliverance the Assembly should make. The Assembly 
became a boiling caldron of passionate political debate, from 
which issued the declaration that the Assembly was "under obli- 
gation to promote and perpetuate the integrity of the United 
States and to strengthen, uphold and encourage the central gov- 
ernment." There was no question as to the duty of a citizen to 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



45 



be loyal to the existing government. It was a question whether 
the loyalty of a citizen in a seceding State was due first to the 
state government or to the central government. It was this 
purely political question which the Assembly decided. Dr. Hodge 
and a number of associates entered a protest on the grounds that 
the paper adopted by the Assembly does decide a political ques- 
tion "and that the Assembly in deciding this question made a po- 
litical opinion a condition of communion in the Christian 
Church." Dr. Thornwell was not a member of that Assembly, 
but he and others were indefatigable in their efforts, by corre- 
spondence and otherwise, to effect the union of the seceding 
Presbyteries into a General Assembly of the Confederate States. 
His hopes were realized, and the first General Assembly of the 
Confederate States convened in Augusta, Georgia, December 4th, 
1861. He was a towering figure in that body. His most im- 
portant service was the preparation for the Assembly of an 
"Address to All the Churches of Jesus Christ Throughout the 
Earth," a defense of our Church in its separation from the old 
Church, as noble a specimen of ecclesiastical composition as the 
literature of all the ages can afford. Dr. Palmer says of it : "It 
was pervaded with a sacramental fervor which stamped upon it 
the impression of a sacred and binding covenant." In his dis- 
cussion of the relation of Church and State, in that address, oc- 
curs this sentence: "They (Church and State) are as planets 
moving in different orbits, and unless each is confined to its own 
track, the consequences may be as disastrous in the moral world 
as a collision of different spheres in the world of matter."* 

Before passing from this subject, let me further say that whilst 
Dr. Thornwell believed that the Church had a specific vocation 
and a circumscribed sphere of action, he also believed that the 
effect of its work was generic, and that it was felt in every de- 
partment of human thought, experience and effort. The object 
of the Church is to secure the regeneration and sanctification of 
man — to quicken his conscience, to reinforce his will. Place a 
man thus restored by divine grace amidst the responsibilities of 



*At this point the Rev. Dr. T. H. Law, the Stated Clerk of Synod, who 
is also Stated Clerk of the Assembly, held up to the view of the congre- 
gation the original manuscript of the address here referred to, with the 
signature of every member of the Assembly affixed to it. 



46 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



life, and under all circumstances he will act as a Christian should 
act. If he has children, he will educate them. If he sees human 
depravity and suffering, he will reclaim the depraved and relieve 
the suffering. Give him political power of any sort, whether on 
the hustings, at the polls, in halls of legislation, under the judicial 
ermine, or in the executive chair, and he will use that power out 
of conscience towards God. Thus, while the Church must con- 
fine herself to the one work of the salvation of souls, souls can- 
not be saved without leaving a generic impression upon the face 
of all society. , 

5. For the work to which the Church is called, Dr. Thornwell 
found that it was sufficient. It has sufficient organization, suffi- 
cient authority and sufficient power. The Church does not need 
that voluntary societies, without or within the Church, should 
come to its assistance to supply any supposed deficiencies in its 
organization. The Church itself has no authority and has no 
need to devise agencies of her own in addition to those ex- 
pressly given in the Scriptures or necessarily growing out of 
those so given. She may not delegate her authority to any other 
body, or transfer her responsibility. Hence the bitter contro- 
versy concerning "Boards" as a means of conducting the work 
of the Church. Prior to the disruption in 1837, Home and For- 
eign Missions and other Church work were conducted by volun- 
tary organizations, outside of the jurisdiction of the Church, 
called "Boards/' Dr. Thornwell perfectly agreed with Dr. 
Breckinridge and other leaders in the Church that these "Boards" 
usurped the functions of the Church. It is the mission of the 
Church to evangelize the world. The Chuch is a missionary 
society; every member of the Church is a member of a mission- 
ary society. On joining this missionary society, by the very act of 
joining, one is committed to the doing of something for the 
spread of the gospel. The Church with such a membership, with 
its equipment of officers and courts, with its authority, with the 
Spirit of God dwelling within her, is competent to do whatever 
is necessary for carrying the gospel to every creature in the 
world. Therefore, the seizing of this work by a voluntary soci- 
ety is unnecessary and a usurpation. Believing ii? these views, 
Dr. Thornwell soon became a recognized leader of the opposi- 
tion to "Boards." Even after the disruption, the old school As- 
sembly did not wholly emancipate itself from the former means 



Thomwell Centennial Addresses 



47 



of doing Church work. Instead of the Church's assuming 
complete control of all its proper work after the separation, it 
adopted a new kind of Boards in lieu of the old denominational 
Boards, Presbyterian Boards instead of non-sectarian Boards. 
These Boards were brought nearer to the Church by b^ing com- 
posed of Presbyterians, by propagating a Presbyterian gospel, by 
having members of the Board elected by the Assembly and by 
having annual reports made to the Assembly. Dr. Thornwell 
antagonized these new Boards on several grounds. He held that 
they were too large and unwieldy, their membership being scat- 
tered over the whole territory of the Church, so that only a few 
members could attend the meetings. Those few members who 
attended and controlled the business became autocratic and defied 
the authority of the Assembly. The Boards became, as he ex- 
pressed it, not "organs" of the Church as mey should be, but 
independent and competing "organisms." He also violently op- 
posed a custom that had grown up in connection with the 
Boards, of conferring honorary life memberships upon persons 
who contributed given amounts for their work. He did not 
hesitate to describe this as a selling of ecclesiastical honors, and 
did not shrink from calling it "Simony." He believed that the 
true principle upon which money should be given for Church 
work is that of the expression of worship towards God. In the 
Rochester Assembly he contended for radical changes in the 
system. This it was that brought on the great debate with Dr. 
Hodge in that Assembly — a debate which, as we have seen, took 
a wide range into a number of related subjects. In the heat of 
debate, Dr. Hodge declared that Dr. Thornwell's views were 
"hyper — hyper — hyper — high-church Presbyterianism !" which 
caused Dr. Thornwell to reply that the views ot Dr. Hodge 
were "no — no — no Presbyterianism, no — no — no Churchism !" — 
"a touch of democracy and a touch of prelacy, a large slice of 
Quakerism, but no Presbyterianism." 

Dr. Thornwell's views were rejected by a large vote. He then 
offered a protest, but subsequently a paper was adopted by the 
Assembly conceding so much of what he had contended for that 
he withdrew his protest. Applause greeted this generous act. 
One who is ignorant of the history of the Rochester Assembly 
and who merely compares accounts of the modern operation of 
Northern Boards and Southern Committees is led to think that 



4 8 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



there is not enough difference between the debaters to justify so 
great a debate/ and that the chief difference is in the name. Dr. 
Thornwell strongly maintained that he cared nothing for a name ; 
it was the principle he sought. It was because the Rochester 
Assembly finally modified the Boards in accordance with his 
views that the operations of those Boards became more like those 
of our Committees. And so Dr. Thornwell has left an indelible 
mark upon the operations of the Northern Church itself. But 
that a radical difference between Boards and Committees still 
remained is shown by the definitions of the two published by Dr. 
Hodge himself in 1882. Of the Board he says that it "has full 
powers to transact all the business of the missionary cause, only 
requiring the Board to report annually to the General Assembly." 
Of the Committee he says it "is bound in all cases to act according 
to the instruction of the Assembly." At the organization of the 
Southern Church eighteen months later, Dr. Thornwell's views 
were adopted throughout. The work of the Church was placed 
in charge of small Committees, whose members were to live close 
to the central office of administration and whose officers were to 
be chosen by the Assembly itself. The Committees were to make 
annual reports to the Assembly. These reports were to be care- 
fully digested, and the Assembly was thus to control directly its 
own work. Simplicity of organization and directness of control 
by the divinely appointed Church courts are the distinct charac- 
teristics of the new plan. How far the last Assembly at Bristol, 
Tennessee, may have departed from this ideal in permitting the 
Committees to elect any of their own executive officers, and what 
the significance and results of the change may'be, are questions 
worthy of our serious consideration. The men selected by these 
Committees are my personal friends. I greatly admire them and 
staunchly support them, but no personal consideration can ob- 
scure the fact that trie Assembly has changed its method of con- 
ducting the Church's work, and the new method is a hybrid be- 
tween the views of Dr. Thornwell and those of Dr. Hodge. 

Another incident at the Augusta Assembly greatly rejoiced 
Dr. Thornwell. Judge Shepherd, of North Carolina, chairman 
of a committee of distinguished elders to report a charter for 
the Church, recommended the appointment of a Board of 
Trustees, of which the various Committees of Church work were 
to be branches, the Board to receive for the Committees and 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



49 



transfer to them all gifts, conveyances, transfers of estate and 
legacies. The object of this plan was to prevent the accumula- 
tion of power in the various Committees, such as had existed in 
the old Church, and to concentrate the power in the hands of a 
single board immediately under the Assembly's control. Judge 
Shepherd was subjected to a spirited cross-fire of questions from 
all over the house, till at length Chancellor Job Johnston, of South 
Carolina, remarked: "I think the Judge has passed a good ex- 
amination, and I hope he will be allowed to retire." To this 
Dr. Thornwell replied, with a glow of animation suffusing his 
face: "To me this is a most delightful paper. I can find noth- 
ing in it to be objected to, and I move therefore that it be re- 
ceived." Dr. Palmer says, with reference to the incident : "It 
was a scene of dramatic interest the exact parallel with which we 
never had witnessed in a Church court." 

6. He believed that when the courts act within their authority, 
that authority is divine and is binding on the consciences of those 
who are subject to these courts. In 1845 he accepted a call to 
the pastorate of the Second Church of Baltimore, and the Pres- 
bytery of Charleston granted him a letter of dismission to the 
Baltimore Presbytery. There occurred a delay in his presenting 
that letter, and circumstances changed. The Presbytery of 
Charleston recalled the letter of dismission. Dr. Palmer says 
of this act of the Presbytery: "It is the strongest illustration of 
Presbyterial power of which the writer is aware." But he at 
once acquiesced, believing that Presbytery had divine authority 
to control his movements. When Dr. Palmer was called from 
the Seminary to the First Church of New Orleans, and the 
question came before the Synod of South Carolina, many urged 
that the Synod ought to be governed by Dr. Palmer's own con- 
victions of duty. But Dr. Thornwell strongly contended that it 
was the duty of the Synod to decide this question regardless of 
Dr. Palmer's personal convictions. Dr. Palmer himself agreed 
with that construction of the law. 

7. His entire theory of the Church has found formal expres- 
sion in a mounmental book — The Book of Church Order. He 
was chacrimn of a committee of the old Assembly to recast the 
Rules of Discipline and had presented a draft of the new rules. 
The Assembly, however, did not act upon the report before the 
division of the Church. The Southern Assembly, in December, 



50 



Thornwell Centennial Addressee 



1 86 1, appointed him on a similar committee to revise the Rules 
of Discipline and also to revise the Form of Government. Dr. 
Thornwell died within eight months. Dr. John B. Adger, his 
associate and successor, intended to write a history of the prepa- 
ration of our Book of Church Order. He died, however, without 
carrying that purpose into effect. No one else could now write its 
history. It is well assured that the Rules of Discipline were re- 
cast again before being presented to the Southern Church. 
Whether Dr. Thornwell did any work upon that book or any on 
the Form of Government is not known. The members of the 
committee, however, were in hearty sympathy with him in all his 
views of Church government, and whilst he may not have pre- 
pared the Book on Church Order, it unquestionably expresses 
his views and is in a large measure the result of his work and 
influence. Concerning that book, the Chicago Interior declared 
that "in its style it is worthy to be the companion of the Confes- 
sion of Faith and the Catechisms." The Presbyterian Banner 
said of it: "It is Presbyterianism of the highest and purest 
kind." Dr. West, a Northern Presbyterian minister of great 
experience and distinction as an ecclesiologist, says : "It is su- 
perior in every way to any Presbyterian manual of discipline I 
have ever seen." 

Fathers and Brethren, my task draws to its close. I do not 
discuss dead issues nor engage in useless debate of questions for- 
ever settled. It would not be worth your while nor mine merely 
to celebrate the glories of the past or the deeds of a hero. These 
conflicts which engaged Dr. Thornwell's great gifts will ever call 
for the loyal and courageous support of those who love the King- 
dom of Christ. So long as there is ecclesiastical, ambition, so long 
as there is pride of human inventions, so long as there 
is hostility to God and resentment of authority in relig- 
ion, so long as Satan is active in the Church of God, just so long 
will these same questions be encountered and must we dare and 
endure for Christ's crown and covenant. Dr. Thornwell's genius 
showed itself quite as much in the amazing power with which he 
aroused the Church to a sense of the importance of these things 
and to decisive action upon them as in the masterly manner in 
which he wrought out his system. Dr. Conrad Speece tells this 
story of Patrick Henry. He was once employed in a murder 
trial in the city of Richmond. It was quite late at night when 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



5i 



he rose to make his speech. The house was still thronged with 
people who were waiting for his time to speak, though many of 
them had fallen asleep. He began by apologizing for speaking 
at that late hour and said he would not think of detaining them 
longer if it were not for the fact that in this case human blood 
was concerned. He pronounced the four words, "human blood 
is concerned," in such a manner that the whole audience was 
instantly aroused and thrilled. They listened to him with rapt 
attention as long as he chose to speak. What was it that had 
so startling an effect upon that sleeping audience? Had the 
orator's tones imparted to human blood a value it had not pos- 
sessed before? No, he had simply awakened them to a sense 
of the value it always has, even when men are indifferent and 
asleep. In the same way the eloquence of Dr. Thornwell aroused 
a dormant Church to an appreciation of the importance that 
always invests these questions, and that no torpor on our part 
can diminish. 

How many and how powerful are the motives which inspire 
us to be faithful ! It has been remarked by historians that Pres- 
byterian Church government had a controlling influence in deter- 
mining the form of government for the United. States. If that 
be true, how important it is, even to secular government, that 
ive should somewhere preserve that model in its purity, against 
the days when the Ship of State will encounter every species of 
tempest, of every degree of violence and danger ! If this Church 
government be divine, it is indestructible. It may be obscured 
and smothered by human inventions in one place, but some- 
where in the extensive Kingdom of Christ it will reappear, in 
Korea, in China, or it may even be in Africa. Let us beware 
lest, proving unfaithful, the Kingdom be taken from us and given 
to another nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. 

And now once more let us turn and get a last view of Dr. 
ThornwelFs life as a whole. With what reverence did he view 
the Church as the work of Jehovah! How dare a sinful man 
change such an ordinance of God even in the smallest particular ! 
How dare a man, however holy might be the office he fills, put 
forth his hand to touch the Ark of God, however great might 
seem its danger ! And who is it that thus bows so reverently in 
tie presence of the Most High ? He is a youth who, by his own 
efforts and without the aid of adventitous circumstances, achieves 



52 



Thornwell Centennial Addresses 



the highest literary, social and ecclesiastical distinction. He is 
conscious of powers that rank him with the greatest intellects 
of history. See this imperial youth standing at the entrance of 
life, with vaulting pride, unabashed before the throne of God, 
gazing defiance into the face of Diety, gnashing his teeth, raising 
his hand aloft and crying, "I shall be damned, but I will demon- 
strate to the assembled universe that I am not to blame." See 
him again when he has heard the voice of God, and his heart is 
touched and subdued, prostrate before God, always asking, like 
Saul of Tarsus, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" 



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